Blackpill

It’s fortuitous that Blackpill comes along at the same time as the widespread, anxious discussion about the BBC television series sensation, Adolescence.  The central issue is the same – and that is the reach and influence via the internet of the so-called ‘manosphere’ and ‘incel culture’.  But Chris Partrick Hansen’s presentation is very different from the quiet, disturbing naturalism of Adolescence: it is fast moving, black, funny and entertaining even while being chilling at the same time.

Hansen’s anti-hero is 20-something Eli (the program does not ascribe cast names to any characters), fired from his supermarket job after a young woman, Carina, lodges a complaint at misogynistic and threatening posts by Eli on the website ‘Hinge’.   

But that’s merely the narrative thread.  In what Hansen describes as a ‘dis-symphonic mishmash of style and genre’, his real subject is the now blatant misogynist culture that seduces, surrounds, bullies, weighs on, enrages and threatens to overwhelm uncertain, inadequate, aggrieved, sexually ‘unsuccessful’ frustrated young boys and men.

Hansen’s mishmash makes use of song and dance numbers, callous peer pressure, comic and stylised monologues, distorted sound, nightmares, masks and the brief vignettes of straight drama that move the drama to its conclusion – all segue smoothly one to another, never breaking the momentum.  Particularly disturbing is the mentor figure (played by different members of the cast) in a black wolf/robot mask.  He appears first in a dream but then is relentlessly there like a malign Jiminy Cricket, speaking throughout like Darth Vader...

Pills are the code for the men’s degree of commitment to the male cause.  The Blue Pill is acceptance of the status quo – and men there are likely to be doing okay...  That’s illustrated in an hilarious sequence in which the entire cast impersonates Hugh Grant – and very well too.  The Red Pill indicates the awareness that women are attracted only to an ‘alpha elite’ of men – and beta men (the majority) will always be rejected and lonely.  The Black Pill (also referenced in Adolescence) is the horrible truth: you (and Eli) join an on-line hate community - no matter what you do, you can never win, your options were fixed at birth, there’s no hope for you and the only ways out are suicide or violence...

Hansen puts on stage the wide and insidious nature of this culture, arguing that it has seeped into ‘normal’ – or is even an exaggerated version of ‘normal’.  It can begin with innocent-seeming self-improvement ‘gym notes’ (depicted via some clever choreography that becomes increasingly violent) or ‘advice’ sites like ‘How To Talk to Girls’ (this latter in a phoney-cheerful dance number), but such things are gateways for the vulnerable, exacerbating simmering resentments already there.  

Delivering all this to us is a tight and talented ensemble, able to sing, dance and assume multiple roles with varied comic personas: Oliver Tapp, Bailey Griffiths, Natasha Bowers (also dance captain), Lilian Hudson, Oriana Morris-Johnson, Eddi Archer, Conagh Punch, Amelia Pawsey, Veronicka Devlin and Chiara Argirov.  Not one puts a foot wrong, although some witty, clever lyrics and dialogue do get blurred or lost due to diction problems.

That aside, all aspects of this production are excellent: Movement (and choreography?) Sian Quinn Dunbar, Lighting and Vision Design by Jacques Cooney Adlard and the Sound Design is credited to the production company Paracosm.  The text, using a mish-mash there too of devised and archival text, is by Hansen and dramaturgs are Nick Jay and, in addition, Rosa Ablett-Johnstone.

Blackpill is a highly accomplished show in all areas.  Most impressive is its ability to depict something troubling, indeed frightening, and to be entertaining at the same time.  One of the best shows at the Explosives Factory for some time.  It’s quiet ending may surprise and may divide audiences.  Too downbeat after what’s come before?  Or entirely fitting in providing such a simple way out for our hero.  You decide.

Michael Brindley